All That Glitters
by Drag0nst0rm
Summary: Dís is young when she learns to fear flames, but she's determined not to let that fear rule her life forever.


**A/N: A big thanks to Madame_Faust, who let me use her name for Dis's husband!**

* * *

There had been a tapestry in the mountain somewhere, Dis no longer remembered where, that had been woven through with gold and mithril threads. It depicted the wedding of Durin the third in all its dazzling glory.

She had loved it as a child, constantly begging Thorin to take her to see it. She had stretched up onto her tiptoes, straining to reach the mithril crown Durin was casting into the fire.

She never could, of course. She wasn't even supposed to touch it, really, but sometimes, if there was no one else around, Thorin would look around quickly and lift her up as high he could until she could just touch the golden flames.

"Why is he throwing it away?" she asked Thorin when he had lowered her down hastily at the sound of approaching footsteps. "It's so _pretty."_

"To show that his wife is more important to him than his craft," Thorin said, with just a hint of the self-importance that came from being the oldest child and knowing these things.

Her brow furrowed. "So he didn't make things anymore?"

"Of course he did," Thorin said scornfully. "He's a _dwarf. _And it's part of the ceremony, see?" He tugged her over to the next panel of the tapestry, where Durin's wife had removed the crown from the flames. "She gives it back to him to show him he can have both, and then he gives it back to _her_ to show all his best work will be for her."

Dís nodded along dutifully and reached once again for the gleaming golden threads. "Up?" she pleaded.

Thorin looked around quickly and then lifted her once again.

* * *

He could lift her a little higher each year, until she could _almost_ brush the edge of the crown.

Then -

She wondered now, sometimes, if dragon fire had melted the metal threads into a horrible lump, or if the tapestry was still there, waiting in the dark.

* * *

Weddings weren't like that on the long road from Erebor to - to wherever they were going. Even Thorin just looked grim when she tugged on his clothes and asked him, but he normally picked her up and held her close when she asked, so she kept asking anyway. Adad hadn't held her since the dragon came, and Amad's arms kept getting tired.

But today no one could look grim, because Dwalin's aunt was getting married, and it was the first proper celebration they'd had in _months. _

It was the first wedding she could remember going to, and she waited for everything to turn to gleaming shades of gold, just like the tapestry.

Instead, they all gathered around, most people still dressed in the increasingly shabby finery they'd been wearing when they fled, and they lit a fire like the campfires they made every night instead of in a brazier like the picture.

Dwalin's aunt was holding her axe at the ready; her husband to be was holding a little statue he must have chipped from rock he found on the way.

Amad's fingers dug into Dís's shoulders as she winced. "What a pity," she breathed, and from the looks on everyone's faces, Dís guessed they felt the same. Maybe they had secretly been hoping for gold too.

But they declared their vows loudly and cast their gifts proudly into the fire, though Dís noticed the bride had been careful not to throw her's very far. The hilt was still slightly scorched when the bridegroom picked it up, and Amad winced again. "Bad luck," she murmured, and she wasn't the only one.

But they finished their vows strongly, and Amad was the first to go congratulate them, the traditional words of blessing still on her lips.

Dís tugged on Thorin's clothes, even though he was still holding Frerin on his shoulders, who was really too big for it but who had wanted to be able to see, which meant he couldn't hold her. "Is it really bad luck?"

Thorin's face very clearly said _yes,_ but it must not have been after all because he reached down to hold her hand and told her no, and Thorin wouldn't lie to her.

Even if he _did_ squeeze her hand so hard it hurt.

* * *

Dís still wondered occasionally, even years later, if it really had been bad luck. On the one hand, they had lost both halves of the couple at the Battle of Azanulbizar, but on the other hand, they had also lost Adad, whose exchange of gifts with Amad had gone perfectly, and Frerin, who had been too young to exchange marriage gifts with anyone at all.

She had not been allowed to fight, but there was too much for them to do for them to stop her from dragging wood to help with the burning.

It made her feel sick to look out at the rising column of smoke, and the smoke only made it worse, setting her stomach to churning ceaselessly, but she kept dragging the wood in anyway, as horrible as it felt to be _helping _the fire burn. They had said there were too many to bury, and that it was this or the crows. Even this was better than the crows.

The fire was a beautiful, shimmering gold when it started, and Dís hated it with all her might.

If the only way to get married was to toss something into the fire, she thought she might prefer just to never get married at all.

Dragon fire. Funeral pyres.

She was sick and tired of the flames.

* * *

Except they still needed the cook fires, even after that, and once they finally made it to the Blue Mountains and set up the forge for lack of any other options, they needed a fire for that too.

Dís managed to worm out of being the one who had to set it by always being busy doing something else when Amad stoked the fire at home, and Thorin kept the fire at the forge like it was some form of grim, ritualistic penance, though for _what _she didn't know. Under the Mountain or not, Thorin was the best king they'd ever had, and she'd fight anyone who said otherwise.

Then Amad died, and it was down to her again.

The room was small and cold and dim, nothing like the halls of the mountain she still dimly remembered, but somehow that memory was still strongest when she was looking at the licking flames.

"I can manage it," Thorin said from behind her, resting a hesitant hand on her shoulders. "Let me."

She jutted her chin out and shrugged his hand off. "You're managing everything else," she said. "I can manage a fire."

* * *

And she could. Mostly.

She just hated every second of it, and supper was persistently underdone because she couldn't bear to stand too long at the flame.

Thorin ate it mechanically, like he ate everything, so she wasn't sure he'd even noticed. Dwalin _definitely_ noticed if the way he choked on the first bite was anything to go by, but he kept coming by for supper anyway, so she stubbornly refused to accept blame.

Unfortunately, she had no choice but to accept the results, which were terrible meals.

She was going to have to get over this.

When the time came for the Midsummer festival, she walked with Thorin and Dwalin through the streets for long enough to do her duty as their princess and be seen, and then for long enough to do her duty and spread a little coin around by buying a sticky bun.

Then she slipped away to where the entertainers were.

Thorin gave her a sharp glance as she went, but she waved him on. She would be fine on her own, and she doubted anyone would notice her absence. Thorin made an impressively imposing figure all on his own, and Dwalin at his back only helped that impression. No one would be looking for the rather small princess with a name no one outside of Erebor could ever remember. No one became famous for building the pyres after the battle was won.

Or lost. She still wasn't sure which one of those things they had done.

But that thought brought up bad memories of fires, and she was pointedly ignoring those. She marched down the line of singers and storytellers until she found the lone firedancer and wormed the way to the front of his small crowd.

She forced herself to stay there, as close to the heat as she could get. Every time the flames licked close enough to her that her heart jumped into the throat, she bit angrily into her sticky bun and held the morsel on her tongue until the sweetness slowly dissolved. Fire means sweetness, she told herself firmly. Fire means _food_ and nothing else.

The rest of the crowd came and went, but Dís stayed, only departing long enough to drag a nearby log a little closer so she could sit down.

The fear faded at least a little as the night wore on, though she wasn't sure if that was the sticky bun working or just her body eventually wearing itself out on the fire. As it did, she was able to pay more attention to the actual performance and the dwarf doing it. He was from the Blue Mountains she thought by the look of him, not one of their own exiled people. His gold hair shone in the firelight, and he seemed genuinely delighted as he breathed fire out and spun it around himself as he spun in dizzying patterns.

Her nerves came back when she saw just how close the fire licked him, and she started having to take small bites of the sticky bun whenever it came too close to him too.

By midnight, even the honey on her hands was long since licked off, and the dancer finally halted for a long drink of the water in the bucket beside him. He shot her a curious look, and she realized with some embarrassment that after sitting there all night she probably owed him a few coins in the plate others had been dropping into.

He wasn't looking at her purse, though, but at her face.

"You've stayed longer than most," he said cheerfully. "I think you're the most interested watcher I've ever had."

"You're very good," she said automatically, Amad's lessons in diplomacy sticking still.

He raised an eyebrow. "And yet you didn't seem to be having much fun."

"I - " Not afraid, she wasn't afraid, princesses couldn't be afraid - "I hate fire."

He nodded, like this explanation made some kind of sense to him. With her very noticeable accent, it probably did.

There was no pity in his eyes, though, when he said, "Want to learn how to breathe it? It's horribly dangerous, but it's also great fun."

And, well.

How better to win against fire than that?

* * *

It took until the third lesson for them to realize they had never actually exchanged names.

He laughed when she pointed this out before sweeping her a bow. "Víli, my lady. At your service. Part time firedancer and a miner the rest of the time, I'm afraid. And yourself?"

And that was a little awkward because, all dark musings about fame and the lack thereof aside, Dís had actually assumed he'd known.

"Dís," she said, and left off the title, but apparently that didn't matter because Víli's eyes had already gone wide.

"My lady," he repeated a little faintly before shaking his head and saying with a grin, "Well, my lady, pay special attention to the safety instructions then, because if this goes poorly, your brother probably really will have my head instead of just threatening to."

"Threatening to?" she demanded.

* * *

Thorin was utterly unapologetic. "I thought you were courting," he said with his brow furrowed together, as if courting would make threats of beheading more understandable.

It might, actually. She would probably threaten any dwarrowdam's he set his sights on, come to think of it, because after their grandparents, and their parents, and Frerin, and for that matter, the mountain, she thought Thorin would either crumble or turn completely to stone if he lost anyone else, but -

But nothing, she supposed.

She hugged him very tightly, so that she could feel his heart was beating still and waited until he was embracing her back, as gently as if she was the frailest spun glass before she said, "That's very sweet, but you don't have to worry. He's only teaching me how to breathe fire."

Thorin froze. "What?"

In retrospect, perhaps that wasn't the most reassuring thing she could have said.

* * *

In even later retrospect, perhaps she should have just kept her mouth shut.

Because Víli had pronounced her a very capable fire breather by the time midwinter came around and was beginning to teach her the steps to the dance.

He had also offered her a set of bronze hairpins that flickered in the light of the flames.

"I'd offer gold if I could," he said with half-hopeful, half-fearful eyes. "But - " He shrugged and held out his empty hands helplessly.

She traced the delicate patterns in them carefully, too stunned to speak.

A courting gift. He had offered her a courting gift.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I shouldn't have presumed."

"No," she said, shaking herself, "no, that wasn't what I meant at all - They're beautiful, Víli. Truly."

* * *

She walked home from the festival with them carefully placed in her hand, and she jabbed her finger into Thorin's chest before he could speak.

"You're still not allowed to threaten him," she said.

Thorin looked to the hairpins and then said, a little hoarsely, "You look beautiful, Dís."

* * *

The courting gifts were between her and Frerin, an easy back and forth that was delightfully free of that first moment of terror, but the engagement gift - not that she was presuming there would be one, but _if there was_ -

Well, that was another thing.

Because that wouldn't be presented to her. That would have to be presented to her family.

In this case, Thorin.

"If he brings something, I don't care what it is," she told Thorin firmly as she ladeled out their supper. _"Accept it."_

Thorin hesitated.

She yanked the bowl back. _"Thorin."_

"Are you sure?" he asked. "Dís, it won't be - " He stopped at her glare and said. "Do you remember that tapestry you used to drag me to go see? The one of Durin's wedding?"

Her glare softened. "It's one of my clearest memories of Erebor," she admitted.

His own eyes had gentled with memory. "You told me you wanted your wedding to be just like that," he said, and she startled. She hadn't remembered that. "I would hold you up, and you would try to touch that crown."

"It was beautiful," she said defensively, and she still loved that beauty even now. "But whatever Víli brings will be better because it will be _his."_

"Alright, then," he said, nodding, and he finally pulled his supper from her unresisting hands.

She blinked at him, a little surprised he had given in so easily.

"I do _like_ him, you know," Thorin said, sounding a little wounded.

"Oh," Dís said, blinking.

"And you smile more now," he said quietly.

Dís had to swallow rather hard before she sat down.

* * *

(The wedding gifts do not scorch when they go into the fire.

A year later, there is another gift, of a different sort.

The baby is small and perfect and wonderful in her arms. Already, he has a little shock of hair, all of it bright as glistening gold.)


End file.
